For those of you who have kids in several online courses at one time

[Michelle in MO]

:)How do you do it? My two older girls are enrolled in an online writing tutorial now, which is excellent, but it really requires me to keep on top of things (which I do anyway, but it seems more time-intensive, not less).

The reason why I'm asking is that my oldest will probably start taking classes at the community college next year, and I'm considering having her do more on-line courses, if necessary. My druthers would be to have her do all her coursework at the cc (partly because of her personality---she's stubborn, plus she really needs more social contacts than what I can offer her here), but in lieu of that, I've considered farming out more stuff to online courses. However, my question is, maybe doing 2-3 online courses would be about par with the cc, so that's why I'm thinking---could she handle all her coursework at the cc? Or---would that be a mistake?

I am thinking of having her take one summer school course and seeing how it goes.

Any suggestions? How do you moms with kids in all these online courses keep on top of it? Or, are your kids really engaged and motivated to do their schoolwork? My dd gets excellent grades, and scored very high on her sophomore PSAT, but I still feel like I have to keep after her.

Thanks for any help! :)

[mcconnellboys]

Well, I will say that last school year, I had my son doing 3 dual credit college courses (by a combination of correspondence and online); 2 high school level courses; and then he was also doing things for a coop and a full courseload of things with me at home. He did keep up with it, but a psychologist looked at me like I was a total nut and told me that he *thought*, *maybe* I had overloaded him, LOL.....

So the tendency can be to see how things look on paper and want to do them all - now, but the delays of waiting for things to be graded, etc. can making keeping to the "schedule" mom has set just not work out too well.

As long as you have plenty of free time on the back end for her to finish things up more slowly, if that's called for, then I think you're okay. That's what we did. I had actually planned to add in more at the half and I didn't to give adjustment time for all the back and forth of waiting for grades, tests, scheduling the proctoring, etc.

Yes, I think dealing with all that yourself is time consuming, or it certainly was for me. Yes, I think that allowing her to actually attend a school and do the classes there would be easier on you, as long as you don't overload her. The schedule will be more compressed than perhaps she's accustomed to and she will have to study for the tests and take them when they're set, rather than having the flexibility afforded by hsing or even through correspondence courses. So you might want to start out a little slower than you think you'd like and then add more when you see that she can handle it and has become accustomed to the routine of the school.

Regena